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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

I think Ruth created this pretty little prayer quilt. I had fun quilting it with a lot of new improvised quilting designs.

She chose wonderful fabrics that made quilting this even more fun. We're trying to get quilts finished for an upcoming prayer quilt blessing.

Weather: I'm starting to think that the purpose of thunder is to taunt us about rain that will fall elsewhere (not at my house) or will evaporate before it hits the ground (virga). In the last several days I've heard a few drops hit the skylight. I'm thinking a huge percentage of New Mexico's rains are three inch rains--drops three inches apart and lasting no more than three minutes. I'm kind of hoping our luck will change!

Thursday, July 7, 2016

For several years I've been trying out new quilting designs on a large piece of layered white fabrics destined to become a mattress cover.
The matress pad/cover I had quilted 21 years ago is reaching the end of its life. So now I've realized the cover I've been making will only fit a twin sized bed. I have absolutely no idea why I made it so small. That left me with the opportunity/challenge of finding vintage 100% cotton sheets to make one that is actually big enough for my bed.

I did find one sheet from the 1950s in the past several weeks, but thought I'd have to settle with lining it with a pale beige sheet. The one from 21 years ago had white cotton on one side and unbleached muslin on the other.

Yesterday I decided to make a stop at a nearby Salvation Army resale shop. I frequently visit that shop but seldom buy things because the manager insists on pricing things rather high, as if she'd purchased items wholesale instead of receiving them for free. This week I got lucky.

Two new, never opened twin flat sheets.

100% cotton percale, so the thread count is higher than muslin. My mom always preferred percale to muslin, and, I admit, I prefer that texture too.

Given the postal zone on the wrapper, these were manufactured before 1963. I'm also familiar with the labels from the 1950s, and they were not this orange color.

I have a couple of quilts to finish first, so it will be a while.

I also found [an also over-priced] tatted doily; I'll take a photo of that too later.

Monday, July 4, 2016

I've been quilting and taking a few photos to make the rest of the quilting easier. I love quilting and using lots of variations to add interest to the quilt.

I have no idea how all the variations would be received in a quilt show.

However, through all my years of quilting prayer quilts, I developed a practice of stitching a variety of variations because it seems to me that when someone is too sick to do much of anything, he or she might find the variations somewhat like a puzzle.

That idea now carries over into all my quilts.

It's also true that doing exactly the same thing over and over again would not keep me as well engaged when I'm quilting.

I'm tying and burying knots, but only in the white.

The stops and starts, fortunately, are not at all obvious except in the white.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Yesterday I stopped and fiddled in my sketchbook to decide what to do in the corners.

These were both possibilities.

However, I do like to draw spines into the quilt, and I knew my blue and purple markers were almost dry, and Busy Bee Quilts was having a 25% off sale on everything if I got there before ten. They were out of blue markers, but one of my favorite clerks talked me into buying Frixion markers--which I've been terrified to use. She told me that if I got them and didn't like them, she'd buy them back from me. So I bought a package, came home, wrote all over a white scrap and watched in amazement as it disappeared in seconds with heat from the hair dryer. Okay, I was willing to try it on the quilt (and am hoping it will never reappear, although I do launder my quilts). Yes, I have friends who swear by them, but I was still skeptical.

Of course, when I actually stood in front of my quilt, I changed my mind about how to quilt it.
Quilts do have a way of speaking about what they want.

These large corners are going to feature what I sometimes call the Oklahoma Seed Pod, which is the larger portion of the photo above. I call it that because I've only seen it on one other quilt (except for mine), and that was made in 1903 in the Oklahoma Panhandle. I traced the design sometime around 1986 and love to use it and a few of its variations in my quilts.

For some reason, I was really struggling with the quilting today; then it occurred to me that I had invested in Hartley Micro-handles, so they went on the machine, and I'm doing better now--although I still seem to be doing sub-par work for me. Nevertheless, after I take this break, I'm going to get back to work.

I'm also very unhappy with how much my starts and stops show up, so I'm going to start tying off and burying my knots--which will be pretty easy and fast for me after several decades of hand quilting, but will take more time than anchoring by machine.

Before my daughter left for her manicure and a few hours with her best friend, she came into the quilting studio to tell me goodbye, and asked, "Is that quilt for us?" Yes, it will be part of her inheritance, but I hope to sleep under it for several decades first.

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,...

P.S.: I'm getting some lovely comments from no-reply commenters (is that a word?) to which I cannot respond. So if you are a no-reply commenter (you might want to check your profile to be sure you have it set the way you want it set), please know I'm not being unappreciative or ugly about what you have to say.

Post Post Script: Yes, I'm still quite nervous about the Frixion pens, but if white lines appear, they will at least be white lines on white fabric.

Friday, July 1, 2016

This quilt has been in the works for over a year, and in my head for much longer. When I started it, I named it Summer Romance I, knowing I also want to design and make a blue and white quilt that I will call Summer Romance II.

I'm now at the quilting stage--and I'd be quilting right this minute if I didn't need electricity and if we weren't having much needed thunderstorms. (We're getting typical New Mexico three-inch rains--which means the drops of rain are falling about three inches apart. We hope to do a bit better than that.)

You can find more posts about the making of this quilt top here and hereor just have a look at posts from July 2015.(although I'm pretty sure I started this Memorial Day weekend of 2015).

All but the white fabric in this quilt is from Eleonor Burns' Zoey line for Benartex.

I'm quilting with several Glide threads from Fil-Tec, also known as Bobbin Central.

I marked only the spine of all the feathers on this quilt so far.

I made only general decisions about how I would quilt, so when I actually started, I needed a couple of homemade tools. I used a piece of card stock to make the flowing spine above for a two inch wide border.

I cut the paper above to make a more unusual spine for the five inch borders.
I used a plastic lid to plot the spines in the outer border at the top of this post.

The main blocks of this quilt were inspired by a Blackford's Beauty quilt I saw in a magazine around 1983. I've also seen this block called Snowflake, and someone said Bonnie Hunter has designed a quilt using this block. I didn't know that, and I don't think I'll go look at Bonnie's quilt until I'm finished. In any case, this is now my block in a unique setting with lots of room for the quilting to shine.

I wanted to get this quilt done ages ago, and I was thinking I could finish it this weekend, but since I'm using electricity instead of a treadle to quilt this, I have to unplug whenever there is danger of lightning in order not to risk a power surge frying my machine.

I did get to spend a lovely morning (or most of it, anyway) at Dough-Re-Mi Bakery & Cafe catching up with a friend and getting an original quilt she'd like me to quilt very soon--as soon as Summer Romance I comes off the machine.

The last time I checked, the Dog Head Fire was at 96% containment, so we no longer have to worry about that, although we continue to pray for the people who did lose homes. Despite the devastation, there was one family church still standing although everything around it had burned. Another fire started on the other side of the mountain yesterday, about 11 miles from Tajique.

If the stormy stuff continues, I need to go work in my sewing room and, with luck, put those treadles to use!

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